00:00:00.000 - 00:00:50.500

[ Inaudible ] Loneliness and five years of professional comradeship. It is an attempt to document certain ideas with regard to the necessity of strong bonds of kinship and love among the ordained clergy. I have no doubt that all that I say here is equally or almost equally applicable to Christian men and women in every walk of life,

00:00:50.500 - 00:01:14.500

but I make no claims in other directions for my own experience has been that of a clergyman and I want insofar as is possible to make these words not only a study of the theme, that is the presentation in support of a thesis, but also the record of my own personal professional hajira. In his letter to the Christians who lived in Galatia, Paul issues these instructions.

00:01:14.500 - 00:01:32.500

Bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. Now the sense of this sentence is obvious to even the most unsophisticated Christian. We are under obligation as disciples to demonstrate love to one another. Supportive words of scripture spring readily to mind.

00:01:32.500 - 00:01:49.000

You shall love your God and your neighbor as yourself. As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me. For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning that we should love one another. Paul is calling us here not to the recognition of some new legalism.

00:01:49.500 - 00:02:07.000

His principle for writing the Galatians is to eliminate legalism from faith. He is writing instead to call our attention to a life principle which is to be always evident in the family of faith. Even as Christ took the cross of mankind and made it his own,

00:02:07.000 - 00:02:26.000

so we are to take up the hurts of other hearts, the sufferings of Christians and non-Christians, and make them our own. Discipleship means nothing less than this. Discipleship, however, does mean considerably more than this. While the call to burden bearing is quite explicit in this word of Paul's,

00:02:26.000 - 00:02:42.000

there is another implicit dimension to these words which is not so often noted. In order to bear another's burden, you must first be aware of it. That is, prior to bearing must come sharing. Prior to any conscious assistance rendered to another,

00:02:42.000 - 00:02:57.000

there must be an equally conscious recognition of need. On the face of it, this is far from a profound revelation, but I submit that it is one we have quite forgotten. To bear for someone, you must first know what needs to be borne,

00:02:57.000 - 00:03:12.000

and this means, quite obviously, that if you would have your burdens borne by others of the household of faith, you must be willing to share, to tell about, to reveal the weight that presses you. It took me 11 years to learn this.

00:03:12.500 - 00:03:30.000

We often think of Paul as a great burden bearer. Almost every one of his epistles carries expressions of concern, words of wise and prudent counsel, pledges of prayer, support, and the like. We do not so often notice that Paul was an equally great burden sharer,

00:03:30.000 - 00:03:44.000

never hesitating to express to others his needs, that he might know the support of their love, prayers, and deeds. In his letter to Rome and to Colossae, and in his letter to the Corinthians he specifically requests their prayers.

00:03:44.000 - 00:03:57.000

He pleads for hearts to be open to what he is called upon to endure. He reveals the pain of the thorn which is his. He asks for barriers to be broken down. He urges Timothy to hurry to his side.

00:03:57.000 - 00:04:17.500

Paul never hesitates to give to his brothers and sisters in Christ the gift of his own need, his own weakness, his own vulnerability. Surely one of the most obvious evidences of the sin of the world is the fact that most men determine to conceal rather than to reveal themselves.

00:04:17.500 - 00:04:38.500

Self-concealment is regarded as the most natural state for grown men. People who reveal themselves in simple honesty are seen as childish or crazy, as was Billy Budd in Melville's novel, or Prince Mishkin in Dostoyevsky's The Idiot. The assumption that concealment is a more natural state for man than candor

00:04:39.000 - 00:04:57.500

has given rise to many stratagems for getting inside a man's defenses. And these run the gamut from attempting to get a man drunk to asking him to report his dreams or to tell what he sees in some inkblots. Should such stratagems be necessary in the Christian community?

00:04:57.500 - 00:05:16.500

It seems to me that Paul demonstrates, assumes, and teaches exactly the contrary. He expects not an effort to conceal ourselves from each other, a consistent effort to reveal ourselves for our mutual up-building in ministry. The necessary prerequisite for self-disclosure is, of course, love.

00:05:16.500 - 00:05:34.500

And this is precisely the attitude which is to be at the essence of Christian fellowship. When love is in one's heart for another, one should not only be striving to know the other, but also to display love by letting the other know oneself. In other words, one of the most obvious ways in which to make your love real to a fellow believer

00:05:35.000 - 00:05:54.500

is to let that fellow believer into your life that he or she might begin to love you. I shall go so far as to say that it is this openness to bearing for another and sharing with one another, this trusting self-disclosure with concomitant gentle service, which most clearly distinguishes the Christian community from the world.

00:05:54.500 - 00:06:10.500

By this Christ said, "All men will know that you are my disciples, that you have love one for the other." And this love is more than picking someone else up. It is also permitting oneself to be hugged and lifted also.

00:06:10.500 - 00:06:28.500

Now do not mistake my meaning. I am not at this point arguing that we are to be ceaselessly engaged in calling ourselves guilty sinners, in belching up and out our confessions and self-recriminations. Such conversations can be a substitute for really honest self-examination and revelation.

00:06:29.000 - 00:06:54.500

I am saying only that to give oneself to others without permitting others to give themselves to you, to affirm others' needs but to deny your own needs and/or to deny to others the right to affirm you in your needs, is a denial of yourself, of the others, and of God. Basic to my thinking is the proposition, which we shall be noting shortly,

00:06:55.000 - 00:07:12.500

that we become and remain our true selves only in the act of relationship. And therefore, when we reject, conceal, hide ourselves from others, we are rejecting not only them but ourselves also. We so refuse ourselves that we have virtually committed suicide.

00:07:12.500 - 00:07:36.500

Beyond that, by denying our authentic needs, selves, we reject our neighbor also. We give him only bits and pieces, not the whole self. I would even go so far as to suggest that inasmuch as we understand ourselves to be made in the image of God, the denial of ourselves to ourselves, by denying ourselves to others,

00:07:36.500 - 00:07:58.500

this deliberate insistence on seeing less of us than we really are, is a refusal to see and know as much of God as we can see and know of him. Speaking as a Christian to other Christians, it is legitimate for me to assume that we are agreed that there is more blessing in giving than there is in receiving.

00:07:58.500 - 00:08:18.500

All I am suggesting to this point is that this basic principle applies to personal relationships as well as to the benevolent budget of the local congregation, and that such giving includes not only the offering of one's abundance but also of one's poverty. This, it seems to me, is the essence of Christian community.

00:08:18.500 - 00:08:41.500

Such being the case, it behooves the leaders of the faithful to demonstrate this bearing and sharing relationship. The clergyman should be the example of openness to his people, but most of us are not, and because we are not, we do damage to ourselves, to our people, and to our faith. As I have analyzed my own experience and allowed others to do so as well,

00:08:42.000 - 00:08:59.500

I have discovered at least some of those things in me and in my work which have led me to try to go it alone at the very time when I am trying to see to it that others do not have to go it alone. And the foremost of these would be the confusion between myself and my role.

00:08:59.500 - 00:09:17.500

My role is essential to my life. It is basic to my total experience and brings me both joy and sadness. But my role is not me. My role is a gathering of behavior patterns which must be produced in certain appropriate contexts,

00:09:17.500 - 00:09:38.500

while at the same time all behavior irrelevant to the role must be concealed. Now what I have been learning to remember is that it takes a person to play a role. The person is not the role, and indeed the role may in no way provide all the opportunities for self-expression that the person needs and desires.

00:09:39.000 - 00:09:57.500

I have become more and more convinced that most people so identify with their roles that they lose themselves or become, and this is especially tragic, fearful and anxious about themselves. This separation or alienation from the self is at the root of the neurotic personality

00:09:57.500 - 00:10:14.500

of our time as described by Karen Hornine. Test the sad reality of this state of affairs by asking a person who he or she is. Almost without exception, the response will be the identification of a role. Query, "Who are you, Bruce?"

00:10:14.500 - 00:10:32.500

Response, "I am a minister." The reply is a denial of self. It may answer the question, "What?" but not "Who?" Sidney Gerard comments, "There is a Faustian drama all about us in this world of role play.

00:10:33.000 - 00:10:50.500

Everywhere we see people who have sold their souls or their real selves for roles, psychologist, businessman, nurse, physician, this or that. For me, the this or that is minister, and I'm bold enough to believe that I am not the only minister in the church who regularly tells others

00:10:50.500 - 00:11:07.500

not who he is but what he is. We develop a series of interpersonal behavior patterns that leave us feeling good for the moment, but over the long stretch deprive us of our very being, separate us from the fellowship of belief, and force us to lonely calvaries

00:11:07.500 - 00:11:24.500

where not even a mother, a young disciple, or a dying sufferer like ourselves is present to watch and to cry and to plead and to care." This kind of rigid role adherence has been called character armor by the psychologist Wilhelm Reich.

00:11:24.500 - 00:11:37.500

And that designation is well chosen. To protect us from anxiety producing self confrontations and from equally threatening revelations of ourselves to others. Let me be more specific.

00:11:37.500 - 00:11:50.500

By illustrating how this mechanism is developed by ourselves and encouraged by our congregations. Take the question of authority. Most of us have ambivalent feelings about authority.

00:11:50.500 - 00:12:08.500

When we feel put down by authority, we resent the one in authority and may even attack the position of privilege. When we feel supported by authority, we draw closer to it in a desire to share its status. We seek some special preferential attachment.

00:12:08.500 - 00:12:27.500

Now what clergyman has not been called to the proper exercise of the authority of his role and been resented and attacked for it while at the same time resenting and attacking himself for it? One thing we will not do is to confess to our attackers

00:12:27.500 - 00:12:43.500

that we are just as unhappy about the situation as they are and ask them for their understanding and compassion. When so attacked, we buckle on the armor instead of taking it off and showing our soft insides bleeding.

00:12:43.500 - 00:13:01.000

On the other hand, how often do we say to the congregational preacher praisers that we don't want to be loved as a preacher but as a person? I'll never forget the older lady who told me how much she loved me. I felt great and then went on to say that she loved all preachers.

00:13:01.000 - 00:13:16.000

I felt rotten. My disappointment was obviously rooted in the fact that I needed personal affirmation from her, not some kind of reverence for reverends. But I didn't say this to her lest she be offended or not understand.

00:13:16.000 - 00:13:30.000

I just walked away wounded. In these instances you see the role was played at the expense of the self. Bearing but no sharing. Closely related to this but at even greater consequence

00:13:30.000 - 00:13:49.000

is the pastor's role as leader in the faith. The leader in any organization or group confronts authority problems but the leader of a congregation, the pastor, also exercises a leadership in faith which sets his direction and example on a different level from all other leaders.

00:13:49.000 - 00:14:08.500

Those ministers who are open enough with me for me to really know them are more troubled about this dimension of their leadership than any other. We, and I stand with them, are deeply disturbed by the difference between the faith we have and the faith we think our leadership requires us to have.

00:14:08.500 - 00:14:27.500

Have you ever had the experience of being asked, "Are you a Christian?" You respond, note the role inserting itself again, "I'm a minister." And then you are greeted with this reply, "That's not what I asked you. Are you a Christian?" Now most clergy that I know would resent the second question.

00:14:27.500 - 00:14:42.500

And they would resent it not because it is unfair, which it isn't, and not because it is brutally direct, which it is, but because it pierces role armor and forces a man to reveal a little of his inner agony over his believing and unbelieving.

00:14:43.000 - 00:15:02.500

How often when we look within ourselves do we discover the very same questions we so easily answer from the pulpit. Further, if we are able to get inside our role far enough to ask this honest a question, how much of what we do is for our own glory and how much of it is for God's?

00:15:02.500 - 00:15:19.500

Now when your faith is also your profession, it is hard to know how much of your faith is yours apart from your work and how much of it is yours because of your work. The problem intensifies when one recognizes that the pastor's leadership in faith

00:15:19.500 - 00:15:36.500

requires him to constantly be giving demonstrations of it. He must regularly be stepping out where the angels won't go on tiptoe. He does this in the pulpit, with church boards, at the side of the sick and at the grave. He must always radiate the sure and certain hope and at the same time

00:15:37.000 - 00:15:54.500

come to terms with the shadowy doubts he labors so diligently to hide. To the people he leads, "Lord, I will never forsake thee." In his own heart he goes down into the waves, "Lord, save me." Again, the problem is one of confusing the self with the role,

00:15:54.500 - 00:16:10.500

struggling to live up to the image. We want to be what we are expected to be and this leads to controlled behavior. Such conduct is predicated on the assumption that the outer implies the inner. And we know that isn't always true.

00:16:10.500 - 00:16:24.500

We know our outer certainty may be our attempt to quiet inner doubt. This is sad. It's sad because once again we are denying our real selves and because doubt is never dispelled by untruth but only by utter honesty.

00:16:24.500 - 00:16:38.500

We encourage and even demand this honesty in our people but often we do not require it of ourselves. We are ready to bear the pain of another's doubt but unwilling to share the pain of our own.

00:16:38.500 - 00:16:52.500

We are unwilling to share the pain of our doubts even with those in our same role, our brother clergyman. William E. Hulme has written a brief but excellent book entitled "Your Pastor's Problems, a Guide for Ministers and Laymen"

00:16:52.500 - 00:17:07.500

and from his book I excerpt these words. "The most likely father confessors are fellow pastors. Here, however, the minister runs into the problem that these men are often his peers, even in age, and also at times his competitors.

00:17:07.500 - 00:17:19.500

These are men in the same vocation, working in the same community, and often involved in the same problems. Men are reluctant to admit that they need help and even more reluctant to ask for it.

00:17:19.500 - 00:17:36.500

The same sense of failure that other men experience when they ask for his help, the minister himself experiences when he seeks help for himself or for his family. The minister partakes of the masculine defensiveness of our culture. Let's face it, big boys don't cry."

00:17:36.500 - 00:17:52.500

Now it would appear that this author assumes that the principal reason for lack of deep interpersonal relationships between clergy to be the fact that most clergy are men and men don't like to admit their inadequacies. And to a certain degree, this is no doubt true.

00:17:52.500 - 00:18:09.500

Any fair appraisal of our culture indicates that it's considered unseemly for men to demonstrate emotion or failure anywhere except at a football game or after missing a putt on the 18th. And this societal attitude is dead wrong, of course, and also very deadly.

00:18:09.500 - 00:18:22.500

The failure quotient of men is just as high as for women, and a man is no less an emotional creature than a woman. Research has shown that men are less open than women. This means men have more secrets than women.

00:18:23.000 - 00:18:38.500

Keeping more secrets increases inner tension, anxiety, fear, and stress, and the result is more rapid physical and emotional breakdown. The experience of psychosomatic physicians who undertake psychotherapy with male patients suffering from peptic ulcers,

00:18:38.500 - 00:18:54.500

essential hypertension, heart disease, and kindred disorders supports this contention. The American Medical Association has recently issued a report in which they suggest that one of the major reasons for men dying before women is the fact that we retain our tensions.

00:18:54.500 - 00:19:16.500

We do not verbalize, we do not actualize them, and as a result, we die. The fact that men are less open to others and also less open to receive from others cannot help but be a factor in the inadequate relationship which exists between clergymen. But there are at least two other dimensions of this sad situation which must also be noted.

00:19:16.500 - 00:19:35.000

And the first of these is a sense of professional inferiority. The clergyman today is bombarded on every side with that which tends to emphasize the unimportance of his role, and worse, his inadequacy in it. This is the day when science has become a faith and when those not producing

00:19:35.000 - 00:19:47.000

in statistical and material terms are belittled. There was a time when the parson was the person in town, the best educated, most articulate, and consequently most admired. That day is gone.

00:19:47.000 - 00:20:04.000

Today, the average clergyman has persons in his congregation who are more learned, more traveled, and just as articulate as he is. Moreover, these persons are engaged in work which society calls worthwhile in distinction from the man who keeps the old folks happy and tells stories on Sunday mornings.

00:20:04.000 - 00:20:22.000

At the same time that the culture refuses to take him very seriously, other factors conspire to accentuate his sense of inadequacy. His businessmen let him know that as a financier, he is an ignoramus. His record of failures in counseling others convinces him that he has never been taught

00:20:22.000 - 00:20:38.000

adequate psychological counseling techniques. His inability to match the eloquence of the nationally known preacher on radio and television, whose only task, incidentally, is to prepare that weekly broadcast or telecast, underscores his conviction that he is a dismal preacher.

00:20:38.000 - 00:20:55.000

Simultaneously, there arrive on his desk stacks of instructions, directions, and dissertations from leaders in his denomination telling him what he is not doing and what he ought to stop doing. Bearing in mind that the minister is generally a sensitive person anyway,

00:20:55.000 - 00:21:15.000

a person given to self-depreciation, and especially aware of his divinely given responsibilities, it doesn't take very much of this to make him feel inferior. Now I add to this a measure of professional jealousy. It is altogether regrettable, but there is in the ministry the same desire to come out on top

00:21:15.000 - 00:21:29.000

that there is in every line of work. What is more, there is the same tendency to believe that those who get to the top, or closer to the top than we do, have had certain breaks or streaks of good luck which have given to them the success which we rightfully deserve.

00:21:29.000 - 00:21:46.000

Daniel D. Walker has correctly noted that the ranks of the clergy, like the ranks of every other profession, are full of disgruntled men who feel their true worth has been unrecognized, and are consequently especially loath to admit any personal weakness or need to another clergyman.

00:21:46.000 - 00:22:05.000

Bitterness is the poorest of all soils for the nurturing of the growth of meaningful interrelationship. Indeed, bitterness almost inevitably works to the detriment of the one caught up in it. It leads a bad situation to become worse, so that the clergyman passed over by success for one reason or another, just or unjust,

00:22:05.500 - 00:22:18.000

by his anger, frustration, hostility, and wounded pride, becomes progressively less likely to know the victory he longs for. Thus, locked into the cell of his own self-pity, and feeding upon the bile of his own cynicism,

00:22:18.000 - 00:22:32.000

he turns more and more away from the counsel of others, especially his clergy brothers, and ends more lonely, isolated, and negative than he was before. It's a sad story, but no man in the ministry for long has failed to experience it

00:22:32.500 - 00:22:49.000

in the observation of the life of one clergy comrade or another, or, more tragically, in his own life. A particularly subtle manifestation of it may be seen in this all-too-common circumstance. A member of a congregation seeks counsel from a minister of another congregation,

00:22:49.000 - 00:23:06.000

and then in openness tells his own pastor about it. All too often, his pastor looks upon the episode as a rejection of his leadership and of himself as a person. Instead of being grateful for the fact that he and a brother minister can together render intra-professional assistance to the troubled person,

00:23:06.000 - 00:23:22.000

too many men will see the seeking of outside counsel as a judgment upon themselves. They accuse themselves of one inadequacy or another, or they attack the success of the clergyman consulted either by direct comment or inner bitterness, and in either case the result is the same.

00:23:22.000 - 00:23:41.000

No authentic communication, interrelationship, sharing with either the parishioner or the other minister. I do not record this all-too-common circumstance, but candor demands it of me, and if it has no other virtue, it is at least the truth. Put it all together, and the picture is discouraging.

00:23:41.000 - 00:23:57.000

Unable or unwilling to separate himself from his role, the average clergyman suffers intense inner dis-ease. Further, because of his constant questioning of the legitimacy of his leadership, and especially of his spiritual guidance and adequacy, and because it is being locked into a male-dominated profession,

00:23:57.500 - 00:24:21.000

which, limited by its masculinity, tends to reveal less to and to hear less from others, and because of a sense of inferiority given him by society and his own hypersensitive appraisal of his own work, and finally because of a sad delusion which leads him to believe that he is the only preacher with problems like these, because of some or all of these reasons he shares little with his people and less with his clergy brothers.

00:24:21.000 - 00:24:39.000

And so, to his catalog of sins and failures, real or imagined, he adds one more which is very, very real and very, very costly. He tries to go it alone. He does not share, and as I've already pointed out, by not opening himself, he denies himself the fellowship of the faithful,

00:24:39.000 - 00:25:01.500

and I believe the very God in whose image he is fashioned and in whose service he is supposed to find his peace. He does not share, and consequently lives alone. And to be alone is very hard on a man. There is perhaps no experience a man can know which is as deforming or destructive to the self as loneliness.

00:25:01.500 - 00:25:17.500

We begin our earthly pilgrimage in closest relationship to our mothers, whom we see as virtually an extension of ourselves. This primitive "we" group is understood by the infant to be the nature of things, and it pleases him so long as the mother responds to his demands.

00:25:18.000 - 00:25:42.500

But now, please forgive the brevity of these reflections, the experience of separation begins to occur. For some reason and for some time, mother is apart from the child or unresponsive to it, and the child is aware of it. This separation brings with it an intense experience of loneliness and of isolation. The intensity is removed with the return of the mother, but the infant is never the same again.

00:25:42.500 - 00:26:00.500

Fear and distrust are known for the first time. They have rudely intruded into the growth process. And because nothing can be wrong with mother, something must be wrong with the self. The perfect trust of the "we" group is gone forever, and for most people it never returns.

00:26:00.500 - 00:26:18.500

To this place and time in his life, the child has been a pragmatist. That which works for him is good, and that which frustrates him is not good. But now, with the first doubting of the unalterable dependability of the "we" group, the child begins to move from his original pragmatic life to the kind of living which will gain for him the cooperation of others.

00:26:18.500 - 00:26:35.500

Pragmatism has been exchanged for hedonistic utilitarianism. The golden rule becomes the norm, "Do good and good will be done to you," or in language more appropriate to the age, "Be good and good will be done to you." Again, the self is focusing on itself.

00:26:36.000 - 00:26:54.500

It is furthering its own interests and is blithely assuming that to get along in this world, all you need to do is cooperate. And then comes the blow that hurts the most. It is suddenly and very painfully discovered that those with whom we cooperate do not always reciprocate. It only has to happen once, and the lesson is forever learned.

00:26:54.500 - 00:27:16.500

Some people will use our cooperation only to take advantage of us. With the recognition of this, all previous conclusions pass away and a basic distrust of others takes its place. Other people have let us down and are therefore not to be trusted. It becomes progressively more difficult to demonstrate the naive confidence which was previously ours.

00:27:16.500 - 00:27:37.500

We become alienated and inevitably lonely. We find it harder and harder to share because basic to sharing is trust, and trust is gone for us. Our playing the game by the rules has shockingly led to our being turned into fools, and we don't want to make this mistake again. We will no longer give ourselves away to benefit ourselves or others.

00:27:37.500 - 00:28:02.500

We will live our own lives, and so donning our character armor, we prepare for battle. And loneliness is a battle, a battle which at the least wounds and at its worst kills. Now the journey away from loneliness is the journey to others. It is the pathway to the kind of bearing and sharing relationship with others which Paul describes as the life principle of Christ.

00:28:02.500 - 00:28:28.500

I've now taken a step or two along this path, and I'm ready to testify to its beautiful reality. Personal illustration might be in order at this point. I was overcome with a deep loneliness and need to share, and also somehow sensitive to a similar need on the part of a brother clergyman in a neighboring city. I called and asked for a luncheon appointment. He tried to put me off, offering a series of unimpressive excuses.

00:28:28.500 - 00:28:59.500

I persisted because my own isolation was disturbing me. I needed a bridge to somebody else's island. He proposed a date a week off. I pressed for that very day, and finally he relented and we made the date. Three hours later we met for lunch, and I felt obligated to explain my need and to thank him for his willingness to share it. He looked at me without a word for at least a minute as if coming to a decision, and then shared the fact that the night before he had discovered his wife in the arms of another man.

00:28:59.500 - 00:29:31.500

His world had fallen in, and when I had called he was bearing the burden of this crushing revelation alone. He had put off, resisted my luncheon request, thinking it better to bear his burden by himself, afraid to share it, and only my persistence had saved the day. Or better, only the aggressive expression of my own need and of my own vulnerability had encouraged him to share his. Now a beautiful relationship has begun and continues to deepen and to mean more and more.

00:29:31.500 - 00:29:56.500

Now the three cardinal principles of Christian comradeship are clearly evidenced in this single experience. First, notice what I've spent many paragraphs above trying to establish. The tendency we have as human beings to try to go it alone, and more specifically, the tendency we have as clergymen to avoid revealing our weaknesses and failures. Had I met this man upon the street, I would have greeted him, and he would have greeted me.

00:29:56.500 - 00:30:21.000

I would have asked him how things were going. He would have replied, "Great, how are they going with you?" I would have answered, "Never better. Things are great at the church too." And like two lonely, lonely ships, we would have passed in the night of our own. [Pause]

00:30:21.000 - 00:30:48.000

And like two lonely, lonely ships, we would have passed in the night of our own needs. Second, notice that his ability to share with me was directly dependent upon, or better, excited by, my ability to share with him. There appears to be a law of reciprocity and self-disclosure. There's a definite connection between one's willingness to be vulnerable and the degree of vulnerability offered to one by another.

00:30:48.000 - 00:31:10.500

Warm, open people warm and open other people. One psychiatrist has called this principle the dyadic effect. We observe it in almost all of our social relationships and single it out here only because it is the determining dimension in the kind of sharing and bearing we so much need. Before anyone will lean on you, you must be willing to do some leaning.

00:31:10.500 - 00:31:29.500

And I use that word quite deliberately. Dr. Paul Tournier in his "A Place for You" devotes an entire chapter to the idea of leaning. He calls the chapter "The Need for Support." And after establishing the fact that we are all entangled in unimaginably intricate webs of interrelationship and interdependence,

00:31:29.500 - 00:31:59.000

he goes on to argue in later chapters for an even greater openness on the part of the Christian toward God and toward other Christians. Third, the first act of sharing entered into by my clergy brother and myself was but the prelude to a friendship which is now more strengthening than I have words to describe. Suffice it to say that when we see one another, as we do quite regularly now, we come toward each other with a little run and a leap at each other's extended right hand.

00:31:59.000 - 00:32:32.000

And I have more and more of these relationships and they mean... [static] [static]